The Violin Harmony Handbook

Christian Howes

Preface
Acknowledgements:
The materials in this book have been developed with assistance and inspiration from several
people:
Christopher Marion provided substantial editing, notation, feedback, and organization
throughout.
Yap Shu Mei provided transcriptions and notation.
Tomoko Omura provided transcription.
Thanks to my former classical violin teachers Ginny Christopherson and Michael Davis.
Also to my former classical music coaches, among them Markand Thakkar and Marshall
Haddock. My classical teachers taught me to listen and play with musicality.
Thanks to Paul Brown and Bobby Floyd, among other jazz mentors, for teaching me to think
about jazz improvisation and harmony.
In recent years, Ive become a friend, collaborator, and fan of the great violinist, Billy Contreras.
Several of his ideas have come to influence me in the study of jazz violin, and his influence can
be found throughout this book.
Billy would undoubtedly credit many of his own ideas to his mentor, the great violinist and
teacher, Buddy Spicher.

Introduction
If youre a violinist, violist, or cellist interested in creating your own music, I hope this book will
enrich your understanding of harmony on the fingerboard and give you a clearer sense of the
choices available to you as a composer or improviser. Youll find approaches to developing a
strong harmonic comprehension, both from a listening and a theoretic viewpoint. Through
application of these materials, I hope youll be able to improvise richer melodies which flow
from a strong harmonic understanding and intention. This book can be useful both for beginning
improvisers and advanced jazz string players.
Outline (Synopsis)
1)Context- Harmonic fluency is one important component of the knowledge and skill set
necessary to improvise and compose on your instrument. Here we provide a context within
which this book fits.
2) Finding triads in all inversions on the instrument.
3) Applied theory: How does improvisation relate to keys/chords/and modes, and what is voice
leading?
4) Harmonizing melodies
5) Tips on improving your ear to hear chords.
6) Chord pairs
7) More on chord pairs.
7) Tomokos Lesson- In this lesson we go quickly through much of the material weve already
covered, showing one possible practice regimen
8) solo arrangements for violin
9) chord glossary
The best scenario for approaching music is one in which a player has developed a harmonic ear
and theoretical knowledge base. One supplements the other. For example, if you hear a chord
which your ear cant intuitively recognize, then you use your theoretical knowledge to make
sense of how to treat it. Conversely, when youre confronted with a theoretical situation that
doesnt make sense, trust your ear. The exercises in the following chapters are designed to
develop both.
By compiling these exercises into one harmony handbook, I hope you will find yourself
empowered in your creative musical pursuits.

Context
There are at least three challenges facing any creative (improvising) string player, i.e.,
improvisation, style , and harmony.
Style is difficult to teach. Like when learning a spoken language, one needs to listen to and
speak the language, for a long time, preferably around other native speakers. I cant teach style,
but I encourage my students to do a lot of listening, transcription, and interacting within a
community of players who are fluent in the musical language they are interested in learning. If
theres a cultural origin of the style theyre interested in, all the better to study (or somehow
participate in) the culture from which the music comes.
Improvisation is easy and natural, like an ability were born with, but most of us have, through
training, conditioning and/or socialization, become self-conscious and inhibited. Were afraid to
take a chance, play a bad note Those of us lucky enough to be encouraged from an early age to
be creative on our instruments are well-adjusted. The rest of us need to get over our fear and, in
effect, learn to be comfortable with improvisation. We have to learn to be creative with our
instruments.
The best way to learn to be comfortable with improvising is to just do it. However, we feel we
must have a structure to work within. Completely free improvisation can be overwhelming
because it offers too much choice. Too much freedom is unbearable. It exacerbates selfconscious doubts. Better, when first learning, to assign limits, parameters, i.e., structure, to our
improvisation. One advantage this provides is that improvisation becomes more of a task, like
a question on your math homework, a household chore, or anything with simple steps to follow.
People arent self-conscious about tasks, but theyre self-conscious about overt creativity, about
making choices... Common structures include tunes, chord progressions, grooves, and drones.
But there are many other structures we can use to practice improvisation and gain comfort
improvising. If I ask a player to improvise continuous eighth notes in the key of D major , in a
4/4/ tempo at 90 bpm, this is much easier to accomplish for some than, playing something free.
I am preparing a separate book to address this issue. One does not need to know style or
harmony, or even technique, to improvise. One only has to be comfortable enough to be
creative., and this must be practiced by improvising as much as possible. The more accessible
structures one is given to work with, the easier it is to become comfortable with improvisation
over time.

When it comes to harmony, string players tend to be like the emperor who was wearing no
clothes. We pride ourselves in our ability to hear and comprehend music, but rarely can we
actually recognize the harmonic progressions underlying melodies.
Many of us classically trained string players thought that we had actually learned harmony and
theory in our classical studies or our college performance degrees, but we never learned either to
hear the chords, create melodies that fit over the chords, or even how to play the chords on our
instrument. On the other hand, fiddle players trained by ear in folk traditions typically have a
different set of problems. They often hear and improvise comfortably and intuitively over simple
chord changes. But when the chords become slightly more irregular, their ears break down and
they have no theoretic foundation to lean on.
The optimal scenario is one in which a player has developed their harmonic ear and their
theoretic knowledge. One supplements the other. For example, if you hear a chord which your
ear cant intuitively recognize, then you use your theoretical knowledge to make sense of how to
treat it. Conversely, when youre confronted with a theoretical situation that doesnt make sense,
you should be able to trust your ear. The exercises in the following chapters are designed to help
you develop both.

Step 6. Quadruple Stop (Spread) Voicings: (Here you will double one note per triad): A, F#,
D, and A. D, A, F#, and D. F#, D, A, F# (6ths and 5ths)
Step 7. Next, we'll look at diminished chords, augmented chords, and start to play 7th and other
extended chords. After you've figured out the triad shapes in a few keys (minor and major),
you'll start to recognize the shapes in all keys, and this will be helpful whether you're comping,
soloing, harmonizing, arranging, or composing. This is a great way to build your comfort and
understanding of harmony. I suggest working no more than about 15-45 minutes per day on
these, depending on your burn-out meter.

Triad Chord Voicings

Build Harmonic Proficiency
I doesnt hurt to internalize basic triads on your instrument. Try these rigorous, yet rewarding,
exercises in which you will learn to articulate all major and minor triads as double stops, triple
stops, and quadruple stops. Lets start with a D major triad. Our goal will be to find all ways to
play (or imply) the triad on the violin. The notation at the bottom of the page corresponds to the
text below.
Step 1. Single Notes: Start with the single notes in the arpeggio. Each note in the D major
arpeggio represents the triad. In other words, play any one of these three notes - D, F# or A anywhere on the violin, and you are, in effect, "implying the chord D major". That was easy!
Step 2. Double Stops/ Close Voicing: Now harmonize the arpeggio by playing the next voice
in the triad above. For example, if you start in the low register, your first double stop consists of
the notes A and D (a perfect fourth on the G and D strings). The next double stop is D and F# (a
major third). Then the notes F# and A (a minor third). Keep going up (you will duplicate the first
three double stops up an octave.) As you harmonize the D major arpeggio using the note directly
above, all your intervals will be either 3rds or 4ths. The combinations include these note pairs: D
and F# , F# and A, and A and D (voices in close proximity).
Step 3. Double Stops / Spread Voicings: This time you will harmonize the arpeggio using 5ths
and 6ths, instead of 3rds and 4ths. Starting from the bottom of the register on violin you'll have
the following note pairs: A and F#, D and A, and F# and D (and then duplicating up the
octave).
Step 4. Triple Stop / Close Voicings: From the bottom up you'll find the following voicings:
D, F#, and A (root position triad). F#, A, and D (1st inversion triad). A, D, F# (2nd inversion
triad). Continue up the octave.
Step 5. Triple Stop Spread Voicings: The spread voicings skip over chord tones to create a
triad using wider intervals. From the bottom up you'll find the following: A (on the G string),
F# (on the D string), and D (on the A string). D (open), A (open), and F# (on E string). F# (on
D string), D (on A string), A (on E string) Continue up the octave.
Note: In these exercises, you should never double a note. In the triple-stop exercises, you
will always play three notes that form a triad.